In cases where disasters such as fires and earthquakes occur in hospitals, other medical facilities, elderly health-care facilities, etc., stretchers are often used to manually carry people who cannot take refuge by themselves such as patients unable to walk and bedridden patients, to safe places for evacuation. In such cases, if elevators stop, those people must be carried through stairways.
These evacuation activities include the work of transferring each patient from the bed to a stretcher and the work of carrying the patient placed on the stretcher to a safe place. In general, 2 to 4 persons are necessary for carrying one patient by means of a stretcher to a safe place.
For the purpose of quickly performing such evacuation work with less manpower, for example, Patent Document 1 proposes a stretcher comprising a cushiony mattress. The stretcher of Patent Document 1 comprises a cushiony bendable mattress having cylindrical holding portions along the longitudinal edges of the mattress on both sides, with a shoulder belt inserted through each of the cylindrical holding portions; the shoulder belts extending from the respective ends of the cylindrical holding portions provided along both the longitudinal edges of the mattress are connected with each other to form loops at both the ends in the longitudinal direction; multiple fastening belts with their ends on one side fixed to both the longitudinal edges are disposed to oppose each other and lie in the transverse direction of the mattress, with intervals kept between them in the longitudinal direction of the mattress; and buckles are fixed as fastening members to the ends on the other side of the fastening belts opposing each other.
According to JP6-21466Y, the stretcher with the above constitution can be compactly stowed and can be used to efficiently and easily carry a person, and further since it is cushiony, even if the stretcher with a patient on it is carried and placed on the ground, etc. to wait for any further action, the patient can remain comfortable on the stretcher.